B&N to cut prices on entire Nook line

Barnes & Noble has announced price cuts for its Nook line of e-readers to compete with Amazon's Kindle line and tablets from Apple and Google. The biggest price reduction, 20 percent, is on the flagship 16-gigabyte Nook, as the 7-inch, full-color touch tablet has been marked down from $249 to $199 to compete with the Kindle Fire. Smaller discounts are being offered on the 8-gigabyte Nook Tablet and the Nook Color, the company said in a release Monday. That makes the company's tablets "available for the lowest prices ever," Jamie Iannone, president of the company's digital products group, said in a statement. Nook owners can access more than 2.5 million book titles as well as movies and television shows from Netflix and other content partners, Barnes & Noble said. In an agreement announced in April, Barns & Noble will spin off its e-book and e-reader business into a new subsidiary with Microsoft as a partner. As part of the deal Barnes & Noble said it would develop a Nook-branded e-reader app for use on Windows 8 PCs and tablets, including Microsoft's own Surface tablet.